Description

“Monday morning; you have an important meeting in your job coming up today; your kids do not really want to get out of bed; you have 10 minutes to leave the house to avoid coming late to the meeting; the children start to quarrel and you would like them just to get ready to go to school …”

A fairly common situation out of everyday life of parenting – situations when planning and organisation, convincing and persuading do not work anymore; and emotions in all its colours get into the driving seat. How does a mindful response to such a situation look like?

Mindfulness does not propose solutions, does not suggest recipes how to deal with challenging situation. It invites foremost to become aware – aware of all that is happening in a given situation to you, to others. Noticing emotions; noticing thoughts; noticing body reactions – noticing before jumping into an impulsive reaction that you might regret afterwards. Developing the ability to choose your response rather than react!

This is essence of mindful parenting and, with it, the essence of the project “EMP:PATH”. This Erasmus+ Funded project focuses on exploring ways to support parents in developing a more mindful approach to parenting – for their own well-being and the well-being of their kids and families.

Concrete outputs of the projects will be:

Guidelines for a curriculum of mindful parenting programs.

A story-book with shared experiences of parents trying to apply a more mindful approach to their parenting.

Partners

The four partner organisations in the project have a history working with parents as well as having mindfulness as a focus in their own programmes. By getting together in this project, each partner will to learn from each other the experiences and competencies they need to enhance their work in the field of mindful parenting.

Resources

There are many different ways to learn to focus your attention and bring yourself back into the present moment as a parent, and the key aim is to find the style that works best for you. There is a wealth of information available for people to test out and try for their own use. Find out more here